With Sen. John Kerry's confirmation hearing as secretary of state scheduled for January 24, media reports will likely invoke the coordinated 2004 campaign to "Swift Boat" Kerry. While the smears from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) have long-since fallen apart under scrutiny, Jerome Corsi, one of the masterminds behind the campaign, is revisiting his old attacks.

A look at Corsi's "reporting" during the 2008 campaign and Obama's presidency confirms what quickly became clear during his efforts to hamstring Kerry's presidential run: he has utterly no credibility and his alleged reporting should not be taken seriously by media outlets.

Prior to the 2004 election, with the backing of major Republican donors, Vietnam veteran John O'Neill co-founded SBVT in an attempt to derail Kerry's presidential bid by casting doubt on his military service. The group launched a series of dishonest ads in August of that year, accompanied by Unfit for Command, a book co-authored by O'Neill and Corsi. In its review of Unfit for Command in October 2004, The New York Times explained that while the book was filled with "discredited," "faulty" and "totally unconvincing" claims, if Kerry's presidential bid were to fail, the tome would "go down as a chief reason."

When the book was released, co-author Corsi was practically unknown in political circles. He was a regular poster at conservative message board Free Republic and worked at a financial marketing group. After Media Matters highlighted a series of offensive comments he had made at Free Republic -- including calling Muslims "ragheads" and "boy buggers" and labeling Hillary Clinton a "fat hog" -- Unfit for Command co-author John O'Neill repeatedly tried to distance himself from Corsi to tamp down the controversy. While O'Neill tried to claim Corsi merely helped edit Unfit for Command, Corsi was listed as co-author on the book jacket and promotional materials for the book touted his involvement in co-writing it.[link]Más,http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/01/24 ... jer/192363[/link]

There are a bunch of threads with 'Corsi' in the topic title.[*:3rz3tf0e]Jerome Corsi breaks promise to return Hawaiian lady's only copy of birth certificateHolding birthers like Arpaio and Corsi accountable to their wordsJohn Woodman Challenges Corsi and Company to a DebateCorsi/WND v EpectitusJimbot and Corsi phone call 08-03-2011Corsi's "Where's the Birth Certificate?"WND and Jerome Corsi and the $5000. bookJerome Corsi's Birther BookI'm always in favor of a generic thread. That's where I ususally like to dump stuff as well. I use the fogbow search and chose 'topic titles only'.

Over lunch today, I finished reading something I bought last week:Jerome Corsi's novel.And y'know what? I'm kinda glad I read it. Now make no mistake, it's pretty bad. It may well be one of the worst novels I've ever read. But in the course of discovering WHY it was so terrible, I think I might have learned more about fiction-writing than I've learned from reading any given GOOD novel. So if I ever try my hand at writing a novel myself, I'm sure I'll be reminding myself "Don't do what Corsi did."I'll be back later with a fuller review. It's not grand-fiasco level of awfulness, but it's bad for mundane but interesting reasons.

I didn’t decide to read Jerome Corsi’s “The Shroud Codex” because I thought it would be a good book. Rather, having read some of his poor excuses for non-fiction, I wanted to see for myself what happens when a conspiracy-prone journalist tries to write fiction.

The result should have been unsurprising: “The Shroud Codex” reads exactly like a conspiracy journalist’s attempt at fiction. It’s as if Corsi started out writing a non-fiction book arguing for the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, but then decided it might sell better if he wrapped the debate in a thin story and had the characters engage in the arguments instead.

It’s not gloriously awful in an Ed Wood sense; it doesn’t aim high enough to fall that far. It’s little more than a dialogue on scientific claims about the Shroud, with a mystical prologue and epilogue and an entirely unnecessary romantic subplot thrown in to make it seem like a Dan Brown-style novel.

As a pro-Shroud treatise, it’s passable. I personally don’t find it compelling (not least because I don’t consider Corsi a credible source), but I understand why others would. As a work of fiction, however, it’s a failure on nearly every level. I believe I may have learned more about writing fiction by seeing what Corsi did wrong than by seeing what any number of classic authors did right.

Before I get into those problems, let me first summarize the book. Father Paul Bartholomew is a renowned physics professor-turned-priest, who has a near-death experience and is told by God that he will return to Earth to reveal the hidden message that God put in the Shroud of Turin. Jump-cut to three years later when Father Bartholomew, who now looks a lot like Jesus, starts publicly having epileptic-esque displays of stigmata. And not just small surface wounds: sudden cuts and bleeding over his entire body, holes completely through his wrists, and even levitation. He also heals from these wounds miraculously fast.

This draws a lot of public attention, so the Pope hires Dr. Stephen Castle, a renowned surgeon-turned-psychiatrist and author of the pro-atheist book ‘The God Illusion’, to study Bartholomew. Castle is led to believe that Bartholomew’s wounds mirror the wounds seen in the Shroud of Turin, and because Bartholomew shares that his mission from God is to reveal the shroud’s codex, Castle proceeds to investigate the Shroud. A lot. Bartholomew has some more public displays, Castle falls in love with Bartholomew’s half-sister sister (who’s later revealed to be his dead mother, in a twist the book foreshadows so heavily that I’m not sure it’s supposed to be a surprise), the pope flies everyone to the Vatican, and then Bartholomew and his sister/mother levitate in the air and disappear in a flash of light when they get to see the Shroud in person. And after they’re gone, the face on the Shroud is different. Oh, and it's suddenly revealed that Bartholomew might have been conceived without a father. The end.

One major problem with the book is hinted at in the description above, where it says that Castle “proceeds to investigate the Shroud. A lot.” Because discussions about the evidence for and against the Shroud make up at least half of the book, and these discussions have all of the dramatic impact of a Wikipedia entry. The discussions aren’t even particularly useful as educational material because the book is, after all, designated as fiction. Even putting aside Corsi’s credibility as a journalist, he has no obligation to accurately relay facts in a fiction novel.

The half of the book that isn’t occupied with discussions about Shroud evidence itself is mostly dedicated to other discussions. To illustrate this point, here’s what happens in the first twelve chapters:

Chapter 12 – Castle meets again with the Vatican miracles expert about the evidence for the Shroud. (30 pages)

If the novel were intended as a character study, such talkiness wouldn’t be a problem. But the characters are paper-thin and all sound the same; even the Pope’s voice is indistinguishable from the atheist New Yorker Castle. Moreover, Corsi’s own website promoted this as “a mystery-and-faith thriller.” Outside of Bartholomew’s stigmata displays, however, nothing much happens in the book. Dan Brown’s “The DaVinci Code” may have trod similar historical mystery ground, but it’s still a globetrotting quest with conflict and stakes. “The Shroud Codex” transpires almost entirely through phonecalls and PowerPoint presentations. “Thrills” these are not.

It’s also not much of a mystery. As the outline above shows, the real focus of the book isn’t Bartholomew and his mission from God, but Castle and his scientific skepticism into the authenticity of the Shroud. Corsi assigns Castle the role of determining whether Bartholomew’s miraculous claims are legitimate, but he grossly stacks the deck against Castle from the beginning. Chapter 1 features Bartholomew having a first-hand conversation with God AND Jesus, so there’s never any mystery as to whether Bartholomew is a fraud. The book tries to set up a mystery as to what the “shroud codex” actually is, but Corsi never provides any answers to that. The book literally ends with Castle saying that more research is necessary to crack the shroud’s secret.

Also, from a literary perspective, the focus on Castle instead of Bartholomew is very odd. Bartholomew is the one who is the focus of the first two chapters, and who is literally given a mission from God. “If you choose to return to earth and resume your life there, I will give you an important mission that I believe only you can accomplish. The mission is more important than I can explain to you. The future of human beings on earth hinges on whether you can manage to convey the message I will entrust you to convey.” That’s God’s exact instruction to Bartholomew halfway through Chapter 1.

And what message does Bartholomew convey to the world during the book? Well, here’s one way to put it. Apart from conversations with Castle and a couple of liturgical readings in church scenes, here is EVERY line of dialogue Father Bartholomew speaks between page 12 and page 280 of the 332-page “The Shroud Codex”:

“Mother?...But I don’t have a sister. You look identical to my mother twenty years ago, when she was forty years old…Anne was my mother’s name.” (p. 169)

That’s it. (This is also part of the subtle-as-an-atomic-sledgehammer foreshadowing mentioned above.) A man who may have been sent back from death to convey God’s message to humanity SHOULD be an interesting story. His sanity is questioned, some people follow him and others reject him, he struggles with his burden, etc. But Corsi apparently thought it would make a better book if he shifted focus away from the man with the mission-from-God and onto the atheist psychiatrist, while establishing upfront in Chapter 1 that the atheistic position was wrong.

For the same reason, there’s no real conflict in the story. Corsi presents lots of back-and-forth arguments over Shroud research, but he already had God declare the Shroud to be real on page 7. The reader knows that Bartholomew is sane and the Shroud is authentic, so the only question the story needs to answer is ‘What message does God want him to convey?’ And yet Corsi fails to answer that.

There’s more that’s bad about the book (I haven't touched on the explanation of the Shroud being the result of Jesus quantum-shifting into a parallel dimension), but these are the big problems it has on the fundamental level of just being a competent novel. Plot, conflict, characters, dialogue…these are the basic elements of fiction writing, and Corsi thoroughly botches them all. He didn’t just execute them poorly; he appears to have given them almost no thought at all. And having seen the end product, I feel like I’ve legitimately learned something about what’s important in crafting fiction.

And as an aside that didn't quite belong in the above review, I was amused by the appearance in the book of other material that I recognized from Corsi. Mostly notably the fictional Pope John Paul Peter I, who Corsi says chose his name in accordance with the prophecies of St. Malachy.Also, near the end, he briefly mentions face-recognition software that one of Corsi's WND articles relied on in claiming that some old photo was actually the earliest photo of Abe Lincoln.But most significantly, and most relevant here, is the irony that while Corsi is the foremost skeptic of Obama's Hawaiian birth and certificate, he's a staunch believer in the miraculous authenticity of a linen that has a thousand-year-gap in its chain of custody and which multiple expert tests have said wasn't created until a thousand years after Jesus lived.

Loren wrote: I believe I may have learned more about writing fiction by seeing what Corsi did wrong than by seeing what any number of classic authors did right. The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was formed in 1982. The contest, sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University, recognizes the worst examples of "dark and stormy night" writing. It challenges entrants to compose "the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." The "best" of the resulting entries have been published in a series of paperback books, starting with It Was a Dark and Stormy Night in 1984. [/break1]wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_d ... ormy_nightRules: [/break1]bulwer-lytton.com/index.html]http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/index.html Winners: [/break1]bulwer-lytton.com/winners.html]http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/winners.html( I seem to remember reading more entries online years ago. It appears you now have to buy the books to read some really funny stuff. “It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.”― Charles M. Schulz, It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Snoopy

Corsi should have included zombies and maybe a flame thrower. Everything is better with zombies.Let me remind you, both Father Bartholomew (the ostensible central figure) and his mother (who plays a small supporting role, including the romantic interest of the actual main character) are both dead people who come back to life. And the Shroud itself is a relic of a dead man who came back to life.

But a flame-thrower? That would have meant including some kind of action. And Corsi clearly wanted none of that.

Corsi should have included zombies and maybe a flame thrower. Everything is better with zombies.Let me remind you, both Father Bartholomew (the ostensible central figure) and his mother (who plays a small supporting role, including the romantic interest of the actual main character) are both dead people who come back to life. And the Shroud itself is a relic of a dead man who came back to life.

But a flame-thrower? That would have meant including some kind of action. And Corsi clearly wanted none of that.Maybe he could have a blonde haired Moldovan character who shambled around moaning, "Brainzzzz!!"

Corsi has two more books on the way. Actual, full-length physical books, not like his Saul Alinsky and CCCP e-booklets. Though one of these is only being published by WND.In April: [/break1]amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Relentless-Campaign-Public/dp/1595554742/]Bad Samaritans: The ACLU's Relentless Campaign to Erase Faith from the Public SquareIn July: [/break1]amazon.com/What-Went-Wrong-Debacle-Avoided/dp/1938067045/]What Went Wrong?: The Inside Story of the GOP Debacle of 2012 . . . And How It Can Be Avoided Next Time

In Who Really Killed Kennedy?, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., provides readers with the ultimate JFK assassination theory book. One-by-one, each chapter will examine the strongest arguments regarding the killing of JFK, including theories surrounding the mob, the CIA, Cuban radicals, LBJ, right-wing extremists and more.

By book's end, Who Really Killed Kennedy? will provide convincing analysis that existing evidence rules out the possibility that JFK was killed by a lone assassin. Fifty years after this epic American tragedy, there's still a gunman on the loose.It's as if there's a strategy here to undermine Esquire's claim of satire. Just make Corsi's *actual* output so ridiculous as to make it impossible for the average reader to distinguish jokes from reality.

In Who Really Killed Kennedy?, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., provides readers with the ultimate JFK assassination theory book. One-by-one, each chapter will examine the strongest arguments regarding the killing of JFK, including theories surrounding the mob, the CIA, Cuban radicals, LBJ, right-wing extremists and more.

By book's end, Who Really Killed Kennedy? will provide convincing analysis that existing evidence rules out the possibility that JFK was killed by a lone assassin. Fifty years after this epic American tragedy, there's still a gunman on the loose.Bugliosi already did that with Reclaiming History, and would you believe it, he arrived at the exact opposite conclusion ](*,)

Corsi's got a new conspiracy theory...and it's one that I don't think any of us saw coming:[/break1]wnd.com/2013/05/historian-obama-helping-resurrect-ottoman-empire/]Historian: Obama helping resurrect Ottoman Empire?Is Obama helping advance a grand plan by Turkey, with the support of Germany, to restore the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic caliphate that controlled much of southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa for more than six centuries?

Is Obama helping advance a grand plan by Turkey, with the support of Germany, to restore the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic caliphate that controlled much of southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa for more than six centuries?The historian is [link]Robert E. Kaplan,http://robertekaplan.net/[/link], not the better known journalist Robert D. Kaplan. REK has been affiliated with neo-conservative and anti-Islamic groups for a while, including the recently formed [link]Gatestone Institute,http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/ ... _institute[/link]. Like many right wing organizations, its founders and funding are shadowy. Genome Corsi may have run out of ideas and taken to quoting materials by other right-wingers.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut